Humanitarian context
Guatemala faces multiple challenges, including organized crime, drug trafficking, lack of educational opportunities and limited access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. In addition, income in the Latin American country is very unevenly distributed. More than half of the population earns so little that basic food is not sufficiently secured. The poor economic progress of the last three decades was completely curbed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Over 58 per cent of children of indigenous origin are affected by undernutrition, while the rate for the whole population is 47 per cent. This means that almost one in two children under five years of age suffers from chronic undernutrition. This is one of the highest rates in the entire region. In addition, access to health care is extremely difficult.
BENEFICIARIES
WORKERS
FOOD SECURITY AND LIVELIHOODS
DISASTER PREVENTION
EXPATRIATE
NATIONAL
Our activity
According to the food insecurity analysis carried out by national and international institutions involved in the Integrated Phase Classification (IPC) published in Guatemala in June 2023, between September 2023 and February 2024, 2% of the Guatemalan population would be in the Emergency Phase (4), representing 323,000 people, and more than 2.7 million (16% of the population) in the Crisis Phase (3). The departments with the most food-insecure population (Phases 3 or 4) include Alta Verapaz (34%), Chiquimula (25%), Huehuetenango (23%) and Quiché (21%).
In Guatemala, in coordination with UNICEF and the Ministry of Health, we helped the most food vulnerable people in Chiquimula, Huehuetenango and Alta Verapaz to access basic services provided by mobile health and nutrition brigades, a multi-sectoral intervention focused on the prevention and reduction of chronic malnutrition and the detection of acute malnutrition.
In collaboration with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the Ministry of Public Health, we initiated nutritional care for the population in a situation of mobility in the municipality of Esquipulas, Chiquimula, with mobile teams, and were also able to respond to food security needs in Chiquimula and Huehuetenango thanks to European funds (ECHO).
In the department of Sololá, through the programme financed by the Cooperation Fund for Water and Sanitation of the Spanish Cooperation agency, we managed to guarantee the human right to water and sanitation, achieving improvements in 13 municipalities, 120 communities, 71 schools and 25 health services.
Finally, we would like to highlight the importance of the work we have done with multi-purpose cash transfers and economic recovery activities carried out in a shared project covering Guatemala and Honduras, funded by the US humanitarian assistance agency (BHA).
WHERE WE HELP
We help 24.5 million people each year. We work in 55 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe, those most threatened by hunger.
EYEWITNESSES
MARILY: "IT IS VERY SAD TO SEE THE SIGNIFICANT IMPACT THAT MALNUTRITION HAS ON CHILDREN'S DEVELOPMENT"
Guatemala is currently experiencing one of the worst droughts in the world. The drought caused by El Niño, together with losses caused by coffee rust, has led to a decrease in agricultural production, affecting the main source of income for families along Guatemala's Dry Corridor.
Most smallholder farmers have lost 75-100% of their crops; as a result, the food security of vulnerable populations has severely deteriorated and they are living at subsistence levels.
Marily, 23, is seven months pregnant and works as a nursing assistant in San Miguel, in the Chiquimula region. When Marily was diagnosed with a high-risk pregnancy, her employer (the government) did not grant her maternity leave until the day she gave birth. "After a caesarean section, you have maybe a month to recover."
She wakes up every morning at 5 a.m. and walks to work at dawn, carrying a small cooler loaded with vaccines along a winding road running up and downhill until she reaches the pick-up point. After a half-hour bumpy ride on a dirt road up the mountain, Marily and two other nurses arrive in San Miguel, heading for the health centre where they work. The centre in San Miguel is a simple shed where they provide daily care to the indigenous Maya Chortí population, who live in extreme poverty and would otherwise be unable to access basic medical care.
Marily does not cease striving to help those most in need. "It is very sad to see the significant impact that malnutrition has on the development of children and even on the development of my country, as this disease reduces the intellectual, learning and productive capacity of the new generations," explains Marily. In fact, 73 per cent of Guatemala's entire population has no health coverage and 53 per cent have insufficient income to cover their nutritional needs.
Action Against Hunger programmes in the Dry Corridor focus on providing food assistance to families in crisis situations, especially during the critical months known as the "hunger gap" or "hunger season", which runs from May to August. In addition, it seeks to strengthen key local actors in the area.
"That's why the collaboration between the government and Action Against Hunger is so important: together we coordinate actions to guide food and nutrition strategies in the most vulnerable sectors," says Marily.
Food assistance takes the form of cash transfers distributed in three payments throughout the lean season, depending on the size of each household. After each disbursement of funds, monitoring is carried out to assess the impact of the aid on food access and consumption indicators.
Similarly, in the Chiquimula region, a screening programme is being implemented to identify chronically malnourished children and under-fives with acute malnutrition. Detected cases are referred to the appropriate health centre, where continuous monitoring is carried out to ensure adequate follow-up.
